SCOTTISH GAELIC LANGUAGE

also called Scots Gaelic, or Erse, a member of the Goidelic group of Celtic languages, spoken along the northwest coast of Scotland and in the Hebrides islands. Scottish Gaelic is a recent offshoot of the Irish language. Introduced into Scotland about AD 500 (displacing an earlier Celtic language), it had developed into a distinct dialect of Gaelic by the 13th century. A common Gaelic literary language was used in Ireland and Scotland until the 17th century. By that time Scottish Gaelic had developed enough to be considered a separate language from Irish. Manuscripts in a definitively Scottish form of Gaelic began to appear in the 16th century, but the first Gaelic book printed, John Carswell's Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh, published in Edinburgh in 1567, still adhered to the Classical Modern Irish norm. See also Celtic languages.